I'm trying to find a set of rules for a $80m league that will make it unattractive to use a fatigue strategy.

Input is desired... Do you think any of these might help? What other things should I try?

Of course:
- No AAA, WW, live play - Too tempting for fatigue

Hitters:
- Require 8 position players with at least 600 PA/162 each. That means that you've spent for full time players, you might as well use them. It also means that platooning probably won't be an option, which is unfortunate.
- Total PA/162 of 6000? No AAA, remember...

Pitchers:
Minimum team IP/162 of at least 1300, maybe 1350. With no AAA, that may ecourage a few hitters parks.
Minimum pitcher salary of $1.0 or $1.5m. Less incentive to burn a pitcher if you have a big dollar committment to him.

I should mention... The league is going to try to prevent a LOT of things I hate in the sim
- Deadball pitchers
- Certain parks
- Certain players (Joss, Hojo, Bib Roberts, etc)
- AAA and WW abuse
- The DH and live play

Most if it is pretty straight forward. But fatigue is going to be tough.

If you have the time to police the games each day, just have a rule that all games where any player sees action at less than 100% (or 98% or whatever) will be forfeits. This will ensure all owners keep their guys at 100%, will have to draft accordingly up front and have to spend money on a bench and enough IP, but still give options for platooning and such.

If you don't have time for that, then you can setup rules that all players drafted cannot go past their RL PAs or IP or you are ineligible for the playoffs. Again, that would allow platooning and such, but would really make people think about their darft, in-season fatigue and how they're using their players and bench when drafting.

Those would be interesting ways to force people to draft differently and manage their teams daily...

The in season limit is interesting, but it screws people too much. I appreciate the suggestion, and it may be the only way to eliminate this problem, but I think it might be a cure that's not much better than the disease.

The in season limit is interesting, but it screws people too much. I appreciate the suggestion, and it may be the only way to eliminate this problem, but I think it might be a cure that's not much better than the disease.

What about limiting the player pool for hitters to the top 10 in PAs by season http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/PA_top_ten.shtml or something similar. Maybe a theme league where you sign up and slect one of these guys as your captain and all other starters must have the same or more PAs than your captain?

On the pitching side, if you don't want it to come down to team IP, maybe set a min/max on real life appearances or something like that. That should give you the ability to sift out some fatigue cookies and should do an adequate job of removing deadball RP or guys who didn't get many starts.

Len, I think you hit it. Require 600 PA/162 at each position (maybe 550, since a full-time player batting 8th can play every game with only 550 PA/162). Perhaps add that all bench players are limited in their PA/162, maybe no more than 100.

If you're concerned about people tanking games with scrub starting pitchers, you could put in a minimum salary for starters (not too high, unless you want to prohibit tandems as well). Make the penalty stiff, and it will be self-policing: if someone starts a scrub against me, I'll let you know!

Some interesting thoughts here.... thanks for the suggestions, and if you have more, please let me know.

I intend to appeal to people's honor (we're agreeing to play a game by certain rules), but I also want to set up the rules so that they make it to your disadvantage use the fatigue strategy. IF that's even possible.

By setting a minimum $/IP or $/PA it preverts people from drafting cheapo players that are the weak half of their fatigue team. The problem is this must be done through a white list or black list set up by admin.